Aliyah

Plunging back into the crowd, she made straight for the nearest set of flags: green-coloured, painted with a clumsy bird’s silhouette. People scowled as she pushed at them to get past, disrupting the flow of foot traffic—but there was no time to worry about bruising or rudeness. Sebile would be up in a few minutes; maybe even less.

Several uniformed people milled about the base of the bird flag, chatting amongst themselves. They had vehicles by their sides, resembling chunky, magically-powered velocipedes: each sported a transparent tank filled with bright pink liquid, and two seats—the first for the driver, the other for a passenger.

“Guides?” she gasped out.

A man turned to face her, tipping his helmet up from his face—he had the same bird silhouette stitched onto his tunic, and bright blue wings painted onto his vehicle.

“That’s us,” he said, flashing her a grin—the corners of his eyes crinkled in easy lines. “Crowfire Whispers, at your service!”

Aliyah dug the coin from her pocket and thrust it out. “I need to get to the Undercity. Uh—you know Whistle House?”

One of his companions frowned. “The Crow Ear base?” she asked. “We don’t get involved with that kind of thing. It’s a coincidence of naming, you understand. The boss just likes birdwatching.”

“Drop me off nearby, then,” she said, fighting the urge to glance over her shoulder. “Within a street or two is fine. Please.”

The man eyed the golden coin in her hand. “Hmph. I suppose I could.”

“It’s your neck, Emil,” his companion called as he pocketed the coin. “Watch out. Falsewater approach is probably safer.”

“Yes, yes. I know it.” Emil made an easy, dismissive gesture to her as he maneuvered his vehicle into place and turned to address her. “Hop on, miss. Keep your feet tucked in, and grab onto the bars. And put on this helmet—no arguments, please.”

She certainly wasn’t going to disagree on that account. She strapped the provided helmet onto her head and scrambled awkwardly onto the passenger’s chair. Gripping the metal bars welded into the back of his own seat, a thought occurred to her: helmet aside, this didn’t seem terribly safe. But what other options did she have? Simply running would be too slow. Emil mounted and cranked the engine; a gritty roar shook the vehicle as it hummed to life. To her surprise, foot traffic split on all sides at the sound.

Emil’s vehicle started rolling and the crowds parted several dozen feet ahead, as if people were used to this sort of thing. Footgoers threw up spell-shields in passing. She risked a backwards glance as the wheels began clicking like clockwork, just in time to glimpse Sebile stumbling out of the alleyway. Spell-light crackled in the Calamistrum’s hands, lancing like lightning. In an instant, something sped around the corner and through the air to land in front of Sebile, homing in on the pale glow: a witch’s broom.

She ducked her head, hoping desperately that she hadn’t been seen. Unlikely, given the way the crowd was slow in closing the gaps behind. They careened out of the square and down the street but they were leaving an open wake, clear as day.

“Emil?” She leaned forwards, speaking against the wind. “Can you go faster?”

She looked over her shoulder again, then up—her heart sank as she spotted Sebile again, a point-topped shape streaking skywards.

“I certainly can, miss,” he called. “After the stairs.”

“Stairs?” she asked.

“Stairs!” he agreed with sun-bright exuberance. “Hold on tight!”

The vehicle made a sharp turn, into a pit set into the floor—only noticeable at the last second. She gave an involuntary shriek as they bounced down a sloping set of stairs, carved out from a tunnel of stone. The thickness of the wheels smoothed out the jaggedness of the ride, but she still felt every bump in miniature, jolting up her legs and tailbone. Her teeth rattled together even as she clenched her jaw shut. The pink fuel sloshed madly in its tank, but Emil didn’t seem bothered; he leaned over the handles and guided his vehicle as it raced onwards. Was that a grin she spotted at the corner of his mouth?

Cool air whistled around them as they whooshed their way down, blowing her hair back from her face. Her fingers tightened on the handholds as she spotted glowing moss flashing past in blurry clumps. Her heart pounded as she pictured slamming into the curve of the tunnel at this speed, helmet or no: pulped brains, shattered spine, internal bleeding. Would she be able to heal that? Probably not.

A pair of pedestrians came into view, walking down with their backs to them. Aliyah yelled reflexively, but Emil merely twitched the vehicle to the right, chuckling over the wind.

“Relax, miss! Crowfire Whispers is the best at what we do!” He merged back to their side of the staircase, narrowly dodging another group of pedestrians making their way up.

She desperately wanted to believe they were. The stairs came to an end, merging into an Undercity thoroughfare. Citizens shouted and scattered as they roared out of the tunnel, wheels clicking and squealing against the cobbles.

“Faster, yes?” Emil asked, and wrenched at a lever below the handlebars. The vehicle jolted, tearing down the street.

Aliyah bit back a scream as they took another turn, hands locked tight onto the grips. The weight of the helmet on her head was a small comfort as Emil leaned the vehicle to make the corner. They bolted past storefronts of all kinds, then down a street that seemed slightly more suited to vehicular traffic. They outpaced two mage-chariots in quick succession, zipping around another corner. Aliyah recognised the Falsewater station as it blurred past, then little else as they tore down another street.

The faintest shard of relief had grown in her chest before the air thickened like syrup and her ears popped. The moment lingered, the air turning thick and slow like honey. Resin flowing to amber, slow and seamless. Somewhere not far behind came a flash of spell-light.

How? she thought, before a hand latched onto her shoulder.

The Calamistrum’s voice echoed in the silence: every sound wrong, her syllables like knives. The light took on a strange quality, tinted as if through a thousand fragments of differently-stained glass. When she turned her head to look over her shoulder, there was a resistance—a backwards tugging at her neck and jaw.

It was Sebile on her broom, gloved hand gripping her shoulder and the other clutched around a gemstone the size of an egg. Arrows feathered her shoulders like a mantle. The glow of the gem drew her eye, shimmering with sigils and cracking down the center. One more moment, before the gem split fully and time seemed to move again.

Sebile yanked them improbably sideways. Space twisted around them as the stone burst into hundreds of tiny shards. Colours whorled, melting her peripheral vision. By the time the swirls withdrew, they were bouncing across unfamiliar cobbles. The vehicle tilted. Emil yelled. The hand moved from her shoulder to clamp around her arm, tight as a vice.

“Found you,” Calamistrum Sebile’s voice cut crisply through the whistling air, burrowing into her ears. “Fleshcrafter.”

Arrows peeled from Sebile’s shoulders and flocked to the air. Dark spikes punctured her flesh. She numbed the pain as the hand tugged her upwards. Another hand unclasped the helmet from her head, the fingers curling into hair. She heard a distance crunch of metal as the vehicle hit the ground, and Emil’s shout some ways off.

Sebile dragged her through the air, some sort of suspensory magic at play. She banked her broom sideways, slowing for a landing.

She had to think, and quickly. Aliyah detached the gathered clump of hair at the roots and yanked away as soon as her feet found solid ground, to no avail. The fingers around her arm dug in, hard. She lunged for Sebile’s ungloved arm instead. Half a handful of vasodilation poured through before a shield sprang up, pushing her away. Sebile did slump—almost falling as her broom dipped the last few inches—but her spider’s crest flared with oily light and she blinked her eyes open in the space of seconds.

Adaptive magics? Aliyah wondered hysterically.

“None of that,” Sebile said, sliding off her broom. Her gloved hand still wrapped around Aliyah’s arm. “You’re coming with me. I don’t know what you’ve heard about us, but I assure you that you won’t come to harm.”

Come to harm or not, going with Sebile was probably going to keep her from finding the schismatists, keep her from finding Zahir. He was out there, somewhere. Kionah’s words flashed through her head once more: they took a Healer. What would happen if they found out about him—a real Healer?

“Will you cooperate?” Sebile continued. “Or will I have to take additional measures?” She was already reaching for the vials at her belt.

Vials.

Aliyah turned her head away as Sebile stepped closer. She heard the pop of a cork and smelled the beginnings of cloying fumes.

Think. Fast.

She blocked her lungs off, just for a moment. Her free hand found her pocket, the brace of her own vials stowed inside. She pressed the caps down, all three of them. Ducking around the fumes shoved into her face, she drew her arm back and threw her handful of potion into Sebile’s face.

Glass cracked. Foam puffed outwards, smothering the smoke. Sebile gave a cry before disappearing into its pale depths. Aliyah yanked her arm out of Sebile’s loosening grip and scrambled away, bubbly tufts clinging to her sleeve.

Lungs back to normal. Breathe, now. She turned and ran, tugging arrows from her arms and back, heedless of the bleeding. Behind her came a roar of spellfire, a sound like a hundred logs popping in unison.

Something whistled as it flew over her head: a strange, metallic cylinder. It landed three feet in front of her and emitted a wave of spell-light as it cracked open—touching it forced her back, an invisible repellent, like the wrong side of a lodestone. More cylinders clinked down ahead, each spouting walls of runes—signs for silence, muffling, inattention, others she couldn’t recognise. She tried pushing harder, and it pushed back. Emil must be somewhere behind those runes, but what use was that? A guide couldn’t help her here.

Behind her, there came movement.

Sebile’s broom slashed through the air, whacking her hard across the ankles. She tripped. When she tried to stand, it beat her down, hard enough to bruise—no difficult feat, since the whole damned thing looked as if it were cast from iron. She heard footsteps approaching as she struggled to stand. The broom handle struck against her shoulders and along the protective cage of her arms around her head, thudding against bone.

She screamed.

It hurt less than being whipped had. The thought didn’t help her endure it.

“I’ve brought down Behemoths, fleshcrafter,” Sebile spoke. She sounded closer, but not close enough to touch. “Stop resisting—I know all your tricks.”

Above her, the broom rippled. Metal opened along invisible seams and slotted itself into a new configuration: bristles merged to form an ugly spearhead.

Aliyah lunged out from under the broom-turned-spear, brought up short as it pivoted, blunt end slamming into her stomach to drive her back. She thought frantically as she dodged another strike, then another—jabbing with the pointed end, this time. Her magical numbing and muscle efficiency were helping her upright, but the whole thing was cast from metal—she couldn’t keep this up forever. She had to think of a real strategy, and fast. If Sebile could cast spells strong enough to hurt Behemoths, then why wasn’t she doing it now?

“Stop screaming,” was all Sebile said. She stood some six feet away, arms crossed and free of foam. Smoke wisped off her shoulders.

Aliyah rolled to her feet, casting a glance back at the alley mouth as she dodged another strike. Her eyes watered reflexively at the sight: too-bright runes pulsing with power. Whatever Sebile had cast, it’d mask her cries for help at minimum. The spear winded her and drove her back, towards that wall of runes. Forcing her into a corner. Easier to subdue that way. Still, if Sebile was immune to vasodilation, maybe something else—

Her strategising was cut short by another strike of the spear.

The tip sank into her arm, raised to block the blow. She unsheathed the needles from her jacket and sent them flying. Two burrowed into Sebile’s ears. Two up her nostrils. One found her eyelid, the other her temple—slightly off-course.

Sebile shouted. The spear withdrew from her arm—blood poured out—and swung again. She didn’t manage to dodge it this time. Skin tore. Bone fractured. She staggered and fell. Hells, it hurt, even through the numbing. But she had a dubious advantage here: Sebile wanted her alive, just as the schismatists had.

“Lie down and put your hands behind your back,” Sebile snarled. Her voice shook as she plucked needles from her face. “Stop fighting, and this will end.”

“What do you want?” Aliyah screamed, half-crouched on the filthy alley floor. She tried to regain control of the needles, but Sebile had them pinched firmly between her fingers.

Sebile opened her mouth to reply, and Aliyah sprang. She dashed forward, extended her senses like a lance; the spear rushed to beat her back, but she bridged that last foot of air with her magic, shunting a flood of pain signals into Sebile’s body.

…She hadn’t known she could do that. There was a cost, of course. But what was a little more pain, in the face of this? Fresh blood burst from her nose and she coughed, iron seeping across her tongue.

Sebile had hissed, but her crest was flashing again. She didn’t start convulsing with agony.

Why not? Aliyah thought, alarmed. That should have been an overload, for anyone of any size. She focused on backing away, knitting up her wounds, replenishing the lost blood.

The spear struck once, twice, but she’d had plenty of practice thinking through pain by now. The crest was clearly absorbing the magic, drawing it out from her body. The vasodilation had worked the first time round. She didn’t have much practice with inducing pain, but she’d thought that something different might take.

The spear jabbed bluntly into her diaphragm again, forcing a pained wheeze and a step backwards. She tried sending a breakage instead, aimed at Sebile’s ungloved arm. Her eyes watered. Her vision blurred. But her change in tactic had been worth something; Sebile’s arm crunched. She swore and made a gesture with her good arm.

The spear moved. Its metal shaft smashed down onto Aliyah’s wrist, and she screamed as bone fractured—again. Fixing them was quick, but not easy.

“That’s enough,” Sebile said, backing away. She drew a tinderbox from the depths of her coat and dropped the needles in before snapping it shut. “I’ve given you the civilised option.” Her voice was rough with pain, but her control the spear hadn’t slipped; Aliyah brought her arms up to block the next strike, sacrificed more bone in the process.

“Let’s see how much damage you can take, fleshcrafter,” Sebile said, shifting her stance.

The spear swung again, far harder—angled away from her head but otherwise not holding back. Her arm broke fully against the blow just as she was almost done healing the first fractures. Sebile made a gesture with her hand, and the spear’s movements changed, raining down a flurry of smaller blows, inflicting bursts of pain across her arms and shoulders and back. When she tried to run, it followed. The pulsing barrier hurt her eyes, blocked her way.

She forced the pain away and lunged at Sebile again. She didn’t make it as far as last time: there came the jabbing maneuvre again, right into the stomach—and another, square in the solar plexus.

Aliyah heard a strangled, choking noise, realised it came from her own mouth, and crumpled as the air was knocked from her lungs. The spear descended, its strikes harder to avoid as she tried to stand—the thing forced her down the moment she got a knee out from under herself. Like a whip with no give to it.

“There now,” Sebile said. “Stop moving, and I’ll call it off.” The Calamistrum moved her injured arm and grimaced with less emphasis than Aliyah would’ve thought for a broken bone—then she touched it with her other hand, looping fingers around to massage the flesh, and Aliyah realised it couldn’t be broken anymore. The crest, again. How could a lump of enchantment heal so effectively? Sebile might as well have been part-Healer herself.

“Where are you taking me?” she gasped out.

“To a safehouse. You won’t be harmed if you comply. Given current developments, I will have to restrain you for your own good.” A loop of spell-twine began forming in the air next to her. It would take about as much time to tie as ordinary rope. She’d have twenty, maybe thirty seconds. She couldn’t let it be put to use—but she’d burn through her magic before those runes ran down. Soon enough, she’d be slow enough to drag away. New strategy needed, right now.

The spear swung once more. Aliyah slumped down into a crouch and whimpered, throwing her hands over her head.

“Okay!” she cried out. “Okay, I’ll go with you—just stop!”

The spear paused its onslaught and hovered overhead.

“Move, and I’ll be forced to injure you beyond repair,” Sebile said. “Got it, fleshcrafter? I know all your tricks.”

The spell-twine floated closer. Going for Sebile’s arm hadn’t been enough, and vasodilation wasn’t working—she had one shot at this. What would hurt the most? What would be the most incapacitating? Broken femur? Or maybe something that affected concentration, to get this awful spear away from her—inner ear, dizziness and nausea? Yes that sounded fine—and it would make it easier for her to go for a breakage to follow it up if she had to.

She lunged as Sebile levitated the spell-twine closer. The spear sank into her stomach as her magic surged, forking through the air to plunge into Sebile’s ears. Tissues flared with inflammation, vestibular nerve interference pushed as far as she dared—Sebile screeched, crest flashing. The spear was a dead weight as it impaled her. She made the last step; her palm slammed into Sebile’s ungloved arm and pushed breakage through. Magic ricocheted up the arm and down the sagittal lines of her body, snapping both femurs clean in two.

Sebile screamed again, toppling forwards—her hands clawed at Aliyah’s sleeves, dragging her down as she fell. The spear slipped out from under her ribs, leaving a pouring wound. Had it nicked an artery? Sebile was still moving—no time to heal, no time to think. She tried for another breakage, meeting resistance as the Calamistrum’s crest flared with dark light, and could only manage a radial fracture.

The air thickened. Her ears popped. Distantly, she was aware of her nose gushing blood.

Sebile’s hands slammed down onto her wrists, forcing them against the cobblestones. A wave of magic bore down, crushing her body against the floor. Her jaw slammed shut, teeth sinking into tongue. Spell-twine looped over her arms, pinning them together. The puncture in her stomach was still bleeding. There was no air left to scream with.

Something—the spear—slammed into the back of her calf, snapping bone. The weight of the magic eased, just enough for her to wheeze for breath. Sebile’s knee dug into the small of her back as her field of influence slammed down again, with a feeling like pins digging into flesh.

Sebile, moving. How? Two huge breaks—healed already? The crest wasn’t—why—vasodilation had worked. She’d tried—even with adaptiveness, it wasn’t—wasn’t supposed to be like—

Point-tipped pain spasmed across her entire body. Blood and drool leaked from a corner of her mouth; the pain coated her in a cocoon, blazing bright as she struggled to stop the bleeding and heal her broken tibia. The wounds knit slow—too slow. The weight of Sebile’s magic was too much. Moving was impossible.

This wasn’t the worst pain she’d ever felt, she told herself. It wasn’t the worst pain. She could deal with it, she could focus and trick her way out. This was only a bit worse than Saiphenora’s arrow. It wasn’t as bad as the Library had been, wasn’t as bad as weeks of shivering at the foot of her own bed, forehead pressed into the coolness of the tile—

There came a rasp of metal against leather. Something cold and sharp touched at the shell of her ear, tracing down to the side of her throat.

“I’m a Calamistrum,” Sebile snarled somewhere behind her head, panting roughly. Her voice was a scratch of nails across rusted metal. “You know what that means, you jumped-up fleshcrafter? It means you’ll show some respect. I should have you flayed.”

The long edge of the blade dug into her skin. Aliyah pictured its position relative to the carotid arteries. She brought preemptive repair materials to clump about the site of the knife. Her pulse pounded weakly, beating a headache-rhythm against the still metal. How much blood had she lost? Maybe a sideways-slice would be easier to get out of than if Sebile intended to ram the knife point-first—

She gathered her strength and twisted against the web of spell-twine over her arms. Magic slammed down over her shoulders, cutting the motion short.

“Stupid bitch,” Sebile hissed into her ear. Something dripped onto the cobbles—blood. Not just her own. “You’ve had your chances.”

Fingers tightened in her hair, scraping against her scalp. Sebile yanked up. The angle hurt her neck, made it harder to breathe. Her head throbbed horribly, and blood dripped from her chin. She’d bitten a hole through her tongue. Terror scratched at every corner of her skull. Was this it? Back alley, slit throat? She’d already used the hardest casts she knew—

Had she?

The knife scraped round to the front of her throat as her hands scrabbled uselessly in their ties. Panic flooded her brain. Adrenaline spiked of its own accord. Her senses overexpanded, crowding sensory inputs with too much information: blood pulsing, oxygenation, Sebile’s suppressive field pressing down like a liminal ocean—

No fire. No blood.

For the first time since the Library, she excised.

Terror did not make it easy. Moving her magic was a struggle and pushing it beyond its correct limits was worse. She forced it through with gritted teeth, nose bleeding and muscles cramping as she hooked the cast into Sebile’s body. She felt her ribs catch as it pierced the enchantment on Sebile’s coat, felt it strike true. For a moment, she wasn’t sure if it had been enough.

The knife pressed momentarily harder against her throat—then clattered to the ground. A trickle of hot liquid splashed against the back of her neck. She sensed its components through the touch of her own skin, healing senses running over-reactive: redness, plasma, platelets.

The magic field flickered out, leaving only Sebile’s knee pinning her down. Aliyah coughed, pushing fruitlessly with her shoulder and bound arms. There came a choked, retching sound behind her as she heaved with the last dregs of her magic, on the cusp of burning out. Sebile crumpled, and the spell-twine dissolved along with her consciousness. Aliyah shoved off the ground and rolled out from under her, just as the blood began to pour.

Red gushed from Sebile’s mouth as she fell onto her knees. A pale hand came up to clutch at her throat, then to cover her mouth. Her eyes grew wide and glazed as blood spurted from between the gaps of her fingers, sizzling with spell-sparks and puddling onto the grimy cobbles. Aliyah backed away as the Calamistrum’s crest sparked with dull light, crackling with magic. But the tide didn’t falter: if anything, it got worse. Nausea crept up her own throat at the sight. Her body shook, feeling weak all over yet rooted in place.

The crest flared, cracking into two. Sebile’s throat bulged and burst open from the inside, spilling clots. Her head lolled forwards, hat slipping askew. Then her whole body slumped, muscles gone slack, and she hit the ground in staggered steps: torso, shoulders, skull. The crest fell against the cobbles, broken fragments tipping over with a clink. Then: silence. Aliyah bit back a scream, stomach turning. The air reeked of cooling blood.

Her pulse thundered through her veins—too much, too loud. Everything else felt very, very still. This was worse than seeing Alhena beheaded. Far, far worse.

Oh, gods, she thought, forcing herself to step closer. She crouched dizzily, as if in a trance, and reached out to lift the obscuring brim of Sebile’s hat.

Dark hair plastered wetly against the back of a ruined neck. Pieces of vertebrae and brainstem discernible amongst the mulched flesh. Blood still oozed slowly now, fast-coagulating.

Aliyah moved her trembling hand to the shoulder, squeezing her eyes shut. Looked and saw with her magic.

Not that she needed to—the quantity of blood was telling enough.

The Calamistrum was dead.